CLO downplays Gonzalez claim relocation lot
BACOLOD CITY — City Legal Officer Atty. Joselito Bayatan yesterday said that the claim of real estate developer Vladimir Gonzales that the lands, situated at Barangay Vista Alegre, Bacolod City, which are the subject matters of the loan of the City Government with the Philippine Veterans Bank are under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) is a non-issue.
Bayatan said that even the DAR clearance which Gonzales invoked on the land conversion is irrelevant.
He said that as early as 1976, pursuant to the program of the then Ministry of Local Government and as approved by the City Council of Bacolod under Resolution No. 5153-A Series of 1976, the City Government had already identified the subject lands for “Residential Use” under the “1976 Framework Plan of the City of Bacolod”.
Bayatan emphasized that on 1977, the City Council passed Resolution No. 5792 approving in principle the “Draft of the Comprehensive Town Plan for Bacolod City as required by the National Coordinating Council.
This Comprehensive Town Plan as passed by said ordinance was later approved by the then Ministry of Human Settlement Regulatory Commission (Now known as the Housing Land Use and Regulatory Board (HLURB) on September 24, 1980. He also recalled that in 1998, another City Ordinance No. 216 zonified these properties under residential zone and eventually, City Ordinance No. 735 (series of 2000) approved the City’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan “which was duly submitted to and approved by the HLURB Resolution No. 717 dated March 20, 2002 classifying these properties for “Future Urban Use”.
Bayatan also considered the move of Gonzales as deceptive because he is a developer who acquires land for real estate business not like the city whose intentions is to acquire properties for relocation site. “The CARP issue raised by Mr. Gonzalez is very much incompatible, incomprehensible and absolutely inapplicable in the given situation. As we said, Mr. Gonzalez’s CARP issue is highly misplaced under the circumstances and obviously a non-issue and an utter deception. Perhaps, just for him to take a political mileage on his mayoralty campaign,” Bayatan added.
